New Books.

Modem Views on the Toxcemias of Pregfiancy. By O. L. V. de Wesselow and J. M. Wyatt. Pp. viii + 99. London : Constable & Company. 1924. Price 7s. 6d. After outlining in brief a number of the more attractive theories of origin of thetoxsemias of pregnancy the authors proceed to summarise the chemical findings in the different members of the group of toxcemias and indicate in what respect and to what extent they may


New books
Short annotations of recent publications, which aim to be informative and objective but not critical, together with a list of books received. Textbooks are only occasionally annotated.

Atkins. Beryl T. and others (eds.)
Collins-Robert school French dictionary. London: Collins, 1983. viii + 332 pp. £4.95. Based on the Collins-Robert French Dictionary, this is a practical dictionary which aims to be of maximum help to learners in the first three or four years of French. Features of the dictionary are: (1) a concentration on the basic words of French and English, with the emphasis on assisting the user to produce correct idiomatic French; (2) indicator words are used to pinpoint the meaning of the translations given; (3) contemporary everyday vocabulary is given priority; (4) 'activity pages' summarise the vocabulary of particular activities and situations (e.g. telephoning, greetings, travel); (5) clear typography for ease of use; (6) pronunciation is shown in the standard IPA transcription; and (7) French verbs are exhaustively treated.
A collection of 31 specially written articles by authors of many nationalities which aims to re-evaluate the place of the norm in relation to the many norms which vary according tosociolinguistic level and communicative circumstances. Linguistic experience in Quebec is the back-drop for several of the articles.
Using a methodology which has much in common with descriptive linguistics, the authors offer an account of how forms of language are used in communication. Their principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context. The discussion is illustrated throughout by a wide variety of discourse types (conversations recorded in different social situations, extracts from newspapers, notices, contemporary fiction, graffiti, etc.). The techniques of analysis are described and exemplified in sufficient detail for the student to be able to apply them to any language in context that he or she encounters.

Francis. W. N.
Dialectology: an introduction. London: Longman, 1983. ix + 240pp. £6.95. An introductory survey of the discipline which deals with variation in language, which considers both regional and social variation. The book is divided into three sections: (1) variation in various parts of language -phonology, grammar, lexicon, and semantics -and the distribution of variation across the community of speakers geographically, socially, and according to age, sex and occupation.
(2) Methodology of the discipline, with examples from European dialectal surveys, primarily on English, French, and German. There are chapters on sampling the language and the problems of ensuring that the corpus will accurately reveal the kinds of variation present; on sampling the population, collecting data, problems of fieldwork, and on methods of presenting the findings, with special attention to dialect maps and atlases. (3) The relationship of dialectology to linguistic theory. To begin with, the confrontation between the uniformitarian doctrine of the Neogrammarians ('sound-changes are without exceptions') and the dialectologists' awareness of the ubiquity of variation ('each word has its own history') is discussed. This is followed by a treatment of the structuralist paradox: if language is a self-contained structure, how can it change and how can there be dialects? A discussion of generative phonology shows its value in describing and explaining dialectal difference. The final chapter looks at the sociolinguistic approach, with its emphasis on 'systematic heterogeneity' and on the importance of a theory of inherent variability to linguistic studies.

Harrison, Andrew
A language testing handbook. London: Macmillan, 1983 (Essential Language Teaching series). vi + 145 pp. £2.50. This book is concerned with tests set by teachers for their own students, and not with external examinations. The aim is to provide guidelines for setting several kinds of test which will be practical and give helpful information to both teachers and students about their successes and failings. The starting point for the tests in this book is always teaching and learning, with the assumption that the teacher's aim in the long run is to equip his students not with a general knowledge of grammar and vocabulary but with the particular skills that they will need as, for example, a tourist or postgraduate.
This book presents a rhetorical model of pragmatics which studies linguistic communication in terms of communicative goals and principles of 'good communicative behaviour'. The author argues for a rapprochement between linguistics and the traditional discipline of rhetoric. He does not reject the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics, but rather maintains that the language system in the abstract -i.e. the' grammar' broadly in Chomsky's sense -must be studied in relation to a fully developed theory of language use. There is therefore a division of labour between grammar and rhetoric, or (in the study of meaning) between semantics and pragmatics.
The book's main focus is thus on the development of a model of pragmatics within an overall functional model of language. In this it builds on the speech act theory of Austin and Searle, and the theory of conversational implicature of Grice, but at the same time enlarges pragmatics to include politeness, irony, phatic communion, and other social principles of linguistic behaviour.
A comprehensive guide to the use of role play in the classroom. Textbooks are increasingly based on the communicative approach to English language learning, and stress the value of student interaction and the need for role play. This book outlines in general terms what role play is and assesses its educational value. It then provides practical information on how to prepare for, supervise and follow up role playing in the classroom and how to integrate this activity into the total language learning programme. There are detailed explanations of how to exploit existing role-play material and how to create one's own. The appendix provides role-play ideas for beginners, intermediate and advanced students. For the first time the well-known Duden Bilduiorterbuch appears in a bilingual version with French and English vocabulary printed on the same page. The words are listed not in alphabetical order but by groups relating to a particular subject or field of activity illustrated on the same or opposite page. All the terminology relating to, say, printing will be found on a sequence of pages bearing detailed illustrations of the various machines and technical processes involved. The words are linked by numbers to the illustrations, thereby enabling the user to check the meaning of any French or English word against its pictorial representation.
Some 28,000 objects are defined in this way. In addition, there are full alphabetical indices of English and French words which enable the reader to find the relevant illustration. Useful not only to students, but also to a wide range of businessmen and translators who work with French commercial concerns.
Although the myth of 'BBC English' has been largely dissipated in the 12 years since the first edition of this dictionary appeared, the Corporation maintains a policy of avoiding solecism or offence by ascertaining the pronunciation of British personal and place names by reference to the bearers of the name or the inhabitants of the place. The book represents more than 50 years of this research, listing over 20,000 examples drawn from the files of the Corporation's Pronunciation Unit. Pronunciations are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet and in a modified conventional spelling.
The diversity of British proper names, including those with an innocent appearance which conceals some trap of pronunciation, those of foreign origin which may have been to some extent anglicised, or those using Welsh or Scots orthography, makes this dictionary useful to all users of English, both native speakers and foreigners.
A new dictionary which offers help with pronunciation and grammar, examples of usage and idioms, careful classification of usage and distinctions between translations. Although it covers nearly 95,000 words it is still handy enough for the traveller's or student's briefcase. Essentially practical and modern in content, it gives wide coverage of commercial and technical vocabulary as well as sport and popular hobbies.